Good Business - Bad Business
4.4
(14 ratings)
2 Weeks
·Cohort-based Course
Why are some businesses better than others? Learn to identify great businesses, buy them at reasonable prices, and build long-term wealth.
Good Business - Bad Business
4.4
(14 ratings)
2 Weeks
·Cohort-based Course
Why are some businesses better than others? Learn to identify great businesses, buy them at reasonable prices, and build long-term wealth.
Course overview
Learn To Recognize Great Businesses
Some businesses are a pleasure. They run smoothly. They print money.
Others are a frustration. They're always putting out fires. Always short on cash.
In 2 weeks, learn what qualities make a business wonderful. How to identify such winners. And how to use them to build wealth.
Who This Course Is For
01
You want to learn what high quality businesses look like. So you can study the numbers and tell whether a business is wonderful or terrible.
02
You want to run a good business, or invest in good businesses. So you can create wealth for yourself while positively impacting the world.
03
You want to take financially sensible business & investing decisions. So you can avoid costly mistakes and earn good returns with low risk.
Key Outcomes
Learn what separates great businesses from mediocre ones
For example, great businesses tend to have high returns on capital, long growth runways, strong competitive positions, recurring revenues, pricing power, great cash flow conversion, and a host of other traits. We'll help you appreciate the power of each of these.
Know what to look for in the numbers
If a business is high quality, it'll show up in the numbers sooner or later. The problem is: these numbers are expressed in a rather strange language: accrual accounting. We'll show you how to read and speak this language, and how to use it to glean valuable business insights.
Start taking great business and investing decisions
To take good decisions, you need:
- The right information (eg, from financial statements),
- The right concepts (eg, time value of money, opportunity cost), and
- The right modeling/analysis technique (eg, LTV vs CAC, DCF).
We'll show you how to bring all these ingredients together.
Use cash efficiently
Businesses have to do 3 things well:
- Raise cash (eg, issue debt/equity) opportunistically,
- Generate cash via operations (eg, manage working capital) intelligently, and
- Use cash (eg, in internal projects, acquisitions, dividends, etc.) wisely.
We'll help you learn these skills.
Avoid common mis-understandings about business
In our experience, there are widespread mis-conceptions about many business fundamentals. For example, using debt is NOT always bad. Growth is NOT always good. By reasoning from first principles, we'll help you work your way to the truth -- even if it's counter-intuitive.
Become comfortable with basic financial modeling and analysis
Throughout the course, we'll build, analyze, and simulate financial models and spreadsheets to help us understand various businesses. We'll give you access to these models, so you can tinker with them, build on them, run your own analyses and simulations, etc.
Good Business - Bad Business
4.4
(14 ratings)
See What People Are Saying
Brian Feroldi
Gautam Baid
Misha DaVinci
Barrett O'Neill
Chris Munn
Sheila Gonzalez
Meet Your Instructors
10-K Diver
I'm a computer scientist. I don't have much formal training in business.
Over the years, by piecing together information from various sources (eg, books, blogs, podcasts, YouTube videos, Warren Buffett's letters, 10-Qs, and 10-Ks), I gradually figured out for myself the basic principles of business, finance, and investing.
Now, I want to help others learn these principles, so they can take better financial decisions in their lives.
Ali Ladha
I'm a finance and accounting professional with over 12 years of experience working in accounting, capital markets and financial advisory. I began my career working at the "big 4" accounting firms KPMG and Deloitte. I then worked in capital markets at BMO and in tech at Apple, before launching Vertical CPA in 2020.
Since then, I've been helping start-up founders and small businesses with accounting, tax, bookkeeping, forecasting, financial planning and analysis (FP&A), fundraising, and strategic planning.
Course Schedule
4-6 hours per week
Workshop 1: September 19
1:00pm - 2:30pm EST
How Businesses Work
- The lifecycle of a business
- The magic of retained earnings: how businesses compound their owners' money over time
- Businesses as streams of cash flows
- How much should you PAY for a cash flow stream?
- Survival, longevity, and how businesses die
Workshop 2: September 21
1:00pm - 2:30pm EST
What Makes A Business Wonderful? (Part 1)
- The "value chain" that a business is part of
- Types of competitive advantages (moats): Barriers to entry/scale, network effects, etc.
- Cyclicality and seasonality
- Bargaining power with suppliers
- Pricing power with customers
Workshop 3: September 23
1:00pm - 2:30pm EST
What Makes A Business Wonderful? (Part 2)
- The power of leverage
- Scalability: Product vs. service businesses
- Cash flow conversion and working capital management
- The fundamentals of intelligent capital allocation
Workshop 4: September 26
1:00pm - 2:30pm EST
How Business Quality Shows Up In The Numbers (Part 1)
- The fundamentals of accounting
- Cash vs. accrual accounting
- The 3 key financial statements: the Balance Sheet, the Income Statement, and the Cash Flow statement
Workshop 5: September 28
1:00pm - 2:30pm EST
How Business Quality Shows Up In The Numbers (Part 2)
- Things to look for in the 3 key financial statements (eg, operating leverage, debt coverage and margin of safety, net income vs owner earnings vs free cash flow, and more),
- How inflation impacts businesses
- LTV vs CAC analysis
Workshop 6: September 30
1:00pm - 2:30pm EST
Counter-intuitive Truths About Business
- Growth is NOT always good
- Debt is NOT always bad
- Buying is NOT always better than leasing
- Lots of cash on the Balance Sheet is NOT always good
- Negative working capital is NOT always bad
- And more!
Learning Is Better With Cohorts
Active, not passive
This course focuses on live workshops, active participation, and hands-on financial modeling/analysis
Learn with a cohort of peers
Surround yourself with people who share your interests. Engage with them. Learn from each other. Grow your knowledge and skills together.
Frequently Asked Questions
What happens if I can’t make a live session?
I work full-time, what is the expected time commitment?
What’s the cancellation policy?
For how long do I have access to the course material?
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